The Whole Truth

As for Quinn, he’s spending his Sunday in Boars Hill. Maisie raised an eyebrow when he suggested it (‘With my parents? Are you feeling OK?’), but he just laughed and said who wouldn’t want a swim in this weather? And that genuinely was a good half of the motivation. As for the rest, well, that’s a rather longer game.

Her parents have made themselves admirably and discreetly scarce, so it’s been just the two of them by the pool most of the morning, Quinn on a lounger, within a languid stretch of an ice bucket stacked with beer, and Maisie a few feet away, floating gently on an inflatable blue-and-white-striped hammock (blow-up flamingos are evidently too Benidorm for Boars Hill). Maisie’s wearing a floppy pink cotton sun hat and a pair of huge Jackie O sunglasses; she looks like she’s walked straight out of the Profumo affair. Down below, in the valley, the city glitters like a mirage.

‘Love the hat,’ says Quinn.

She looks up from her book. ‘This? It’s completely ancient. I’ve had it since I was at school.’

Her hair has corkscrewed in the wet, and with no make-up she looks adorably fresh-faced.

‘I bet your school was the sort that had straw boaters.’ She sticks her tongue out and he starts laughing. ‘It did, didn’t it?’

She grabs an ice cube out of her drink and lobs it at him but it misses by miles and plops harmlessly into the water.

He grins. ‘Have you still got it? I mean, you’d look seriously hot in school uniform –’

She looks at him witheringly over her sunglasses. ‘Honestly, blokes. You’re all the same. Perving over gymslips.’

‘Blimey, have you got one of those too?’

She sighs loudly and returns, rather pointedly, to her book.

‘What’s it like?’ he says, gesturing at it. ‘Any good?’

‘OK so far,’ she says, without looking up. ‘Though you know what it’s like with crime – it’s all about the ending.’

He gives a dry laugh. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Though apparently this one’s OK. The ending, I mean. That’s what Mum said, anyway.’

‘What’s it about?’

She glances up now. ‘A missing girl. Her parents are really horrible so you’re supposed to think one of them must have done it, but it obviously won’t be as simple as that. And the kid is really manipulative.’ She laughs. ‘Reminds me a bit of me. I used to tell the most enormous fibs at that age, but Dad swallowed it every time.’

‘What about your mum?’

She smiles. ‘She was far too shrewd. But Dad just couldn’t believe sweet little eight-year-old girls could be such good liars.’

Quinn reaches for another beer; Maisie’s definitely going to have to drive them home. Twice in two weeks – it’s becoming a habit.

‘Not just girls,’ he says. ‘The kid in that sexual assault case I’m working on? He’s exactly the same age and he tells whoppers the size of Birmingham.’

Maisie pulls her sunglasses down her nose. ‘Didn’t you say he was probably on the spectrum or something?’

Quinn’s can fizzes open. ‘Yeah, he’s definitely not all there. Bright – just, you know, a bit of a weirdo. And no, before you ask, I didn’t actually say that.’

But her face is serious. ‘What was he lying about?’

‘That call I got on the way here? Looks like this isn’t the first time the mother’s got involved in something like this. Only last time she threatened to report the bloke’s girlfriend for grooming the kid. But it was all a complete fabrication, just to stop them blabbing.’

She frowns. ‘That makes the mother the liar, not him.’

Quinn shrugs. ‘Whatever. All I know is that the kid had the whole thing off pat.’

Maisie puts her book down in her lap. ‘That doesn’t sound right to me. If he really is autistic he’d find that really, really difficult. Kids like that – they can’t even do little white lies, never mind great big complicated ones. Why do you think they have so much trouble dealing with other people? There’s such a thing as too much truth.’

Quinn wedges his can back into the ice. ‘How come you know so much about it all of a sudden?’

She shrugs. ‘I read a couple of articles about it after that Chris Packham programme.’

Up at the house, her mother is waving at them from the edge of the terrace.

Maisie checks her watch. ‘God, is that the time? Lunch must be ready.’ She slips off the hammock into the water, moves over to the side and pulls herself out.

‘You coming?’ she asks, picking up a towel; Quinn still hasn’t moved.

‘In a minute.’ He’s frowning, staring into the distance, tapping his fingers against the table.

‘OK,’ she says, slipping on her sundress. ‘I’ll see you up there.’

He nods, not looking up.

As soon as she’s out of earshot he reaches for his phone.

* * *